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Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

And in response to those whom say that the bible "can not be the word of God" or is "heresy" I say to you, all of scientology has no proof. While the Bible has much proof. How about the prophecies written hundreds to thousands of years before the events happened? How about the proof that Jesus Christ did indeed live? How about the Ark of the Covenant that is hidden somewhere in the middle east? There is so much proof that the bible was indeed written with the inspiration of the most high God and it's sad that so many people search for the truth when God is standing right beside you calling your name.

Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

And in response to those whom say that the bible "can not be the word of God" or is "heresy" I say to you, all of scientology has no proof. While the Bible has much proof. How about the prophecies written hundreds to thousands of years before the events happened? How about the proof that Jesus Christ did indeed live? How about the Ark of the Covenant that is hidden somewhere in the middle east? There is so much proof that the bible was indeed written with the inspiration of the most high God and it's sad that so many people search for the truth when God is standing right beside you calling your name.

I've located a secret photo of it. Apparently it's being guarded by...top men.

For once and for all, who chose the books that made up THE BOOK? Who decided these should be canonized into one book.....Man at the behest of other men!

What does your question have to do with the Origin of life and Evolution? Since86 is right! You guys are just generically bringing up questions that have nothing to do with the thread.

The thread is about Evolution and the origin of life. It stands to reason that the Bibles creation account would come into the conversation, but you guys are just making random attacks on the Bible.

The Noachian Flood, and who chose the books of the Bible have nothing to do with the origin of life.

And the bottom line will always be that disproving the Bible doesn't prove Evolution.

If you don't believe the Bible, that's fine, but again that's not what this thread is about. How about sticking to the subject and defending Evolution and answering how a bunch of amino acids can come spontaneously to life, when real science says life only comes from prior life?

Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

And in response to those whom say that the bible "can not be the word of God" or is "heresy" I say to you, all of scientology has no proof. While the Bible has much proof. How about the prophecies written hundreds to thousands of years before the events happened? How about the proof that Jesus Christ did indeed live? How about the Ark of the Covenant that is hidden somewhere in the middle east? There is so much proof that the bible was indeed written with the inspiration of the most high God and it's sad that so many people search for the truth when God is standing right beside you calling your name.

You are taking their bait. Evolution proponents really can't defend Evolution, so they attack the Bible, thus they don't have to defend Evolution. Lets make them stay or subject and ignore their attacks on the Bible. If they want to make the Bible's authenticity the subject of debate they should start a thread about it.

I think the Mods would permit it in as much as people aren't calling each other names in this thread, and the Bible's authenticity would be a somewhat similar thread.

Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

The thread is about Evolution and the origin of life. It stands to reason that the Bibles creation account would come into the conversation, but you guys are just making random attacks on the Bible.

....which is like me saying it stands to reason that Spider-man would come into a conversation about radiation and its effects on the human body....

An argument on intelligent design is fine. I don't agree with it necessarily, but fine. The bible? No, I don't think it stands to reason the accounts written in Genesis would come up in any serious conversation about the beginning of life on earth. Fairy tales aren't supposed to be taken seriously.

And by the way, evolution itself has been defended pretty successfully in this thread....

Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

Will,

By acccident you had a Darwinian moment and hit on the basis for all of evolution earlier in this thread. Hear me out, please. I gave the example of the yellow butterflies who find themselves in a sooty environment due to a polluting factory being built, so their bright yellow color makes them stick out like a sore thumb vs. the blackened trees. Thus their predators gobble them up at an unprecedented rate. Well, every now and then these yellow butterflies have a brown offspring, by chance of a random genetic mutation. In this altered environment, say those brown offspring have 100-fold better chance of surviving and passing on their brown-winged butterfly morphology to their offspring. It is only common sense that in just a few generations that colony of yellow-winged butterflies EVOLVES into a colony of brown-winged butterflies.

I call it an example of evolution in action, which is 100% correct. You say "hey wait, that's just something that happens naturally", which is also 100% correct. Evolution happens naturally. Its basis is common sense. It's not some fancy world view, or a nefarious attempt to deny God, or whatever.

Substitute the example of the arrival of a soot-producing factory with the emergence of an active volcano, arrival of an ice age, the beginning of a period of global heating, whatever environment pressure you want to choose. Existing life will adapt to that pressure in order to best survive, since its genetic machinery makes such adaptation possible. Over hundreds of millions of years the tiny yellow-to-brown wing color changes are reflected in huge species-altering changes.

Sure the process may be unsettlingly random in that those seemingly doomed yellow butterflies probably also have a few offspring that are orange, grey, white, or green and those don't fare any better than the yellow ones did in the soot-only the brown ones hit the jackpot. But maybe in another niche the pressure is volcanic ash and the grey ones preferentially survive! That versatility to mutate to make a variety of colors serves them well. Call that versatility of the genetic machinery the wisdom of a creator who created the natural process of evolution when the Earth was formed, if you will! That step seems completely unnecessary, but it at least retains the common sense portion of the story- we see evolution in action and it just makes sense!

I don't deny that story of creation is a wonderful one to those that believe it. I just find all of the myriad stories of life overcoming great upheaval to evolve to what we see today to also be wonderful. I can't look at a whale, learn that it is every bit the mammal that we are, and marvel as to how it came to be, a creature so very much more like us than it is like any fish of the sea. The clear fossil record, the DNA evidence, and 50 million years of time show us that some population of an early mammal diverged and led to whales, to land mammals we have today, and maybe even to us. How is that not amazing? Is it an abomination just because some ministers tell you not to listen to ideas that really boil down to common sense in action?

Last edited by Slick Pinkham; 05-09-2013 at 08:50 AM.

The poster "pacertom" since this forum began (and before!). I changed my name here to "Slick Pinkham" in honor of the imaginary player That Bobby "Slick" Leonard picked late in the 1971 ABA draft (true story!)

What does your question have to do with the Origin of life and Evolution? Since86 is right! You guys are just generically bringing up questions that have nothing to do with the thread.

The thread is about Evolution and the origin of life. It stands to reason that the Bibles creation account would come into the conversation, but you guys are just making random attacks on the Bible.

The Noachian Flood, and who chose the books of the Bible have nothing to do with the origin of life.

And the bottom line will always be that disproving the Bible doesn't prove Evolution.

If you don't believe the Bible, that's fine, but again that's not what this thread is about. How about sticking to the subject and defending Evolution and answering how a bunch of amino acids can come spontaneously to life, when real science says life only comes from prior life?

Like I said earlier, how do we know the Amino Acids did not interact with something that came from space? How do we know that it wasn't some microbe buried in a meteorite. I find that idea way more plausible than some creator going ZAP! life! Things from space impact the Earth all the time. No body could answer my postulation, with anything other than "not likely", even though we are talking about billions of years of time for this interaction to occur. Then folks start talking about Floods, and biblical proof of the floods.

Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

By acccident you had a Darwinian moment and hit on the basis for all of evolution earlier in this thread. Hear me out, please. I gave the example of the yellow butterflies who find themselves in a sooty environment due to a polluting factory being built, so their bright yellow color makes them stick out like a sore thumb vs. the blackened trees. Thus their predators gobble them up at an unprecedented rate. Well, every now and then these yellow butterflies have a brown offspring, by chance of a random genetic mutation. In this altered environment, say those brown offspring have 100-fold better chance of surviving and passing on their brown-winged butterfly morphology to their offspring. It is only common sense that in just a few generations that colony of yellow-winged butterflies EVOLVES into a colony of brown-winged butterflies.

I call it an example of evolution in action, which is 100% correct. You say "hey wait, that's just something that happens naturally", which is also 100% correct. Evolution happens naturally. Its basis is common sense. It's not some fancy world view, or a nefarious attempt to deny God, or whatever.

Substitute the example of the arrival of a soot-producing factory with the emergence of an active volcano, arrival of an ice age, the beginning of a period of global heating, whatever environment pressure you want to choose. Existing life will adapt to that pressure in order to best survive, since its genetic machinery makes such adaptation possible. Over hundreds of millions of years the tiny yellow-to-brown wing color changes are reflected in huge species-altering changes.

Sure the process may be unsettlingly random in that those seemingly doomed yellow butterflies probably also have a few offspring that are orange, grey, white, or green and those don't fare any better than the yellow ones did in the soot-only the brown ones hit the jackpot. But maybe in another niche the pressure is volcanic ash and the grey ones preferentially survive! That versatility to mutate to make a variety of colors serves them well. Call that versatility of the genetic machinery the wisdom of a creator who created the natural process of evolution when the Earth was formed, if you will! That step seems unnecessary, but it at least retains the common sense portion of the story- we see evolution in action and it just makes sense!

I don't deny that story of creation is a wonderful one to those that believe it. I just find all of the myriad stories of life overcoming great upheaval to evolve to what we see today to also be wonderful. I can't look at a whale, learn that it is every bit the mammal that we are, and marvel as to how it came to be, a creature so very much more like us than it is like any fish of the sea. The clear fossil record, the DNA evidence, and 50 million years of time show us that some population of an early mammal diverged and led to whales, to land mammals we have today, and maybe even to us. How is that not amazing? Is it an abomination just because some ministers tell you not to listen to ideas that really boil down to common sense in action?

It IS amazing, as a theory, unfortunately that theory is offered as a fact and used to discredit what others choose to believe. Personally, I'm fine believing that God created all things and that SOME evolutionary trends may occur but the sum total of the mutations required to create man in his current form is just too overwhelming to be coincidental, especially on a global population level.

If you get to thinkin’ you’re a person of some influence, try orderin’ somebody else’s dog around..

Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

There seems to be a growing body of evidence that much, or perhaps even all, of the water on a planet such as ours can arrive via comets. Thus the thought that other essential requirements for life could have also arrived by similar processes is not a crazy notion. At this point I don't think there is much data either way, but it seems a decent educated guess. In the vastness of the universe isn't it kind of egotistical to think that life got a foothold here first, or only got a foothold here? If it began somewhere in our galactic neighborhood first then we could well have been seeded for life by cosmic bombardment.

Last edited by Slick Pinkham; 05-09-2013 at 09:14 AM.

The poster "pacertom" since this forum began (and before!). I changed my name here to "Slick Pinkham" in honor of the imaginary player That Bobby "Slick" Leonard picked late in the 1971 ABA draft (true story!)

Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

unfortunately that theory is offered as a fact and used to discredit what others choose to believe.

That's an interesting point of view.

I would instead say that an entrenched belief system is accepted by a great many people as facts that cannot be refuted no matter what, with the threat of eternal damnation to those who dare to use their brain. I don't see a justification for such dogmatic close-mindedness. I find it appalling to see such dogmatic close-mindedness spoon-fed to our children. If you want to home-school your kids and teach them about fairies, dragons, and pixie dust being real, then go right ahead. I will feel sorry for those kids, but in the end maybe they will be able to think for themselves.

Evolution stands only on evidence, not opinion. It will be a great shame to let those who want to cover up that evidence get their way.

Last edited by Slick Pinkham; 05-09-2013 at 09:22 AM.

The poster "pacertom" since this forum began (and before!). I changed my name here to "Slick Pinkham" in honor of the imaginary player That Bobby "Slick" Leonard picked late in the 1971 ABA draft (true story!)

Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

The point was that flood stories were re-told for centuries, long before the Bible was written, by cultures that did not believe in God. Then later, essentially the same story was re-packaged with a religious spin put on it front and center.

If the theory of sudden burst of the glacier melt-swelled Mediterranean into the Black Sea were true,

and if I had survived somehow in a mountain or something while essentially the entire area of the Earth that I know about or that I had ever seen was inundated by 50 feet of water, I would (wrongly) have recorded it as a global flood too. Later re-tellers would further embellish it and spin it to their own purposes. What gets really odd that one of those later re-tellers would have his version of my story decreed to be the word of God!

There’s problems with your assertion there were flood stories told centuries before the bible was written. Take the Epic of Gilgamesh, a flood story you mentioned that is supposingly the oldest of the flood Myths. It was originally written on 12 clay tablets. Although the tablets were said to have been fired in 1150 BC, the origin of the story was dated to 2,500 to 2,750 BC. Which conveniently happens to put it a few centuries before Bible chronology says the Noachian flood occurred. (2370 BC)

There are other experts that date the Gilgamesh Epic between the 21st and 18th centuries BC. To be fair their dates conveniently put the Epic several hundred years after the flood. Lostpedia dates it to the 8th century BC. How they came up with that date is rather curious in as much as the tablets were said to be fired in 1150. Then there’s the “Institute for Creature Research,” which says, “The actual tablets date back to around 650 B.C. and are obviously not originals since fragments of the flood story have been found on tablets dated around 2,000 B.C.”

Obviously if the experts can’t agree on the dates of the Gilgamesh Epic, or the age of the tablets, your assertion that flood stories were re-told for centuries, long before the Bible was written, is in question.

As for the glacier melt theory, I’ve read similar accounts. The accounts were about walls of water 2,000 feet high traveling from 45 to 65 mph. The hypothesis as I understand it is a glacier starts melting and the water is held back until a part of the glacier gives way producing a huge wave that leaves a scar on the land. That makes sense to me, and I buy it happening, but I also buy the Noachian flood happening and that of course would produce the same scaring.

The thing is, people who don’t believe the Bible account will attribute it to glacier melt as a way of discrediting the Bible. However, glacier melt doesn’t account for the fossil record.

Evidence that a flood of immense proportions occurred is in the great number of fossil dumps. The Saturday Evening Post noted: “Many of these animals were perfectly fresh, whole and undamaged, and still either standing or at least kneeling upright. ... Here is a really shocking—to our previous way of thinking. Vast herds of enormous, well-fed beasts not specifically designed for extreme cold, placidly feeding in sunny pastures ... Suddenly they were all killed without any visible sign of violence and before they could so much as swallow a last mouthful of food, and then were quick-frozen so rapidly that every cell of their bodies is perfectly preserved.”

This fits in with what happened in the Noachian flood. The Bible describes it in these words: “All the springs of the vast watery deep were broken open and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.”

The rushing water would no doubt be accompanied by wind, by freezing winds in the polar regions. There, the temperature change would be the most rapid and drastic. This may have been what happened to the mammoth that was uncovered by excavators in Siberia. Vegetation was still in its mouth and stomach, and its flesh was even edible when thawed out.

IN 1932 a road-construction crew was digging near the Colosseum in Rome when one of the men struck a hard object. It turned out to be the tusk and cranium of an elephant. This discovery is not an isolated case. Over the years, about 140 fossilized remains of elephants have been found in and around Rome, the first confirmed case being in the 17th century.

People thought that the bones belonged either to elephants imported into ancient Rome or to the ones that Carthaginian General Hannibal brought into Italy. G.B. Pianciani, a 19th-century priest and professor of Natural Sciences in Viterbo, challenged those assumptions. Because the bones were mostly found in alluvial deposits, he concluded that they belonged to animals that had died elsewhere and were carried to their new location by floodwaters. (For those who don't know an alluvial deposit is material deposited by water, be it rivers or floods. It consists of silt, sand, clay, and gravel, as well as much organic matter.)

A cave near Palermo, Sicily, was filled with many tons of remains, including the fossilized bones of deer, oxen, elephants, and hippopotamuses of various ages— even a fetus. In fact, 20 tons of fossils found their way onto the market in the first six months after the site was discovered!

In Southern England, paleontologist J. Manson Valentine discovered fossil beds containing massive deposits of splintered bones of many of the same animals as well as of hyenas and polar bears. What is the reason for these large beds of diverse animal fossils in such diverse places?

A global flood would explain it. My opinion is there is too much diverse evidence of a global flood to say it never happened. Such evidence is also why some scientists say a huge meteor must have hit the earth in the past. Admitting to a global flood would give credence to the Bible, and that they don’t want to do.

What’s true is everything in the Bible is disputed. Often without reason. One man said Noah’s ark was a myth because it was to big to be carried. He had read where the Levites were carrying the Ark of the Covenant, and assumed it was the same as Noah’s ark.

I’m not going to reply to anymore attacks on the Bible in a thread about Evolution.

Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

There seems to be a growing body of evidence that much, or perhaps even all, of the water on a planet such as ours can arrive via comets. Thus the thought that other essential requirements for life could have also arrived by similar processes is not a crazy notion. At this point I don't think there is much data either way, but it seems a decent educated guess. In the vastness of the universe isn't it kind of egotistical to think that life got a foothold here first, or only got a foothold here? If it began somewhere in our galactic neighborhood first then we could well have been seeded for life by cosmic bombardment.

It could be, but even if it's true that's just kicking the can down the road and passing the buck. It doesn't explain the origins of life other than how they arrived here, versus how they arrived in the physical universe.

Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

The thing is, people who don’t believe the Bible account will attribute it to glacier melt as a way of discrediting the Bible.

Or people will review new evidence as to whether it supports or does not support a specific hypothesis, completely divorced from any sinister motivation to discredit anything.

If I uncovered irrefutable scientific evidence in clear support of a biblical creation in seven days and a Noahian flood, I would publish it in the journal Science (or maybe Nature) and most likely win a Nobel prize one day. It would be a remarkable, transformative scientific achievement.

Data stands on data's own legs. That's how science works.

That's not to say a rogue so-called scientist hasn't now and then will made up data to fit a world view (Andrew Wakefield's fabricated data linking vaccines to autism, as an example). Such rogues are identified, discredited by the scientific community, and the findings 100% retracted.

Last edited by Slick Pinkham; 05-09-2013 at 11:21 AM.

The poster "pacertom" since this forum began (and before!). I changed my name here to "Slick Pinkham" in honor of the imaginary player That Bobby "Slick" Leonard picked late in the 1971 ABA draft (true story!)

Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

It could be, but even if it's true that's just kicking the can down the road and passing the buck. It doesn't explain the origins of life other than how they arrived here, versus how they arrived in the physical universe.

That's certainly true. It could explain all of life on Earth, when paired with an abundance of time and evolution, but it does just shift the question of origin to another setting.

The poster "pacertom" since this forum began (and before!). I changed my name here to "Slick Pinkham" in honor of the imaginary player That Bobby "Slick" Leonard picked late in the 1971 ABA draft (true story!)

Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

What you guys are actually saying now actually implies life didn't originate on earth. You're come a long ways since Darwin. But you still don't have any proof, you are still dealing with a hypothesis.

Going there probably ends the discussion for me. I can scoff, but both sides know there's no scientific proof of that, so what good would it do to keep telling you that? None.

Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

Darwin to my knowledge never wrote a word about the origin of the first life forms on Earth or abiogenesis.

He first outlined examples of the common sense notion of life adapting from other pre-existing life, with abundant examples like my butterfly one (the most famous being the many species of finches in different habitats, with bodies and beaks tailored for exploiting locally abundant diets).

It sounds like to some extent you and geezer are... Darwinists!

Last edited by Slick Pinkham; 05-09-2013 at 12:44 PM.

The poster "pacertom" since this forum began (and before!). I changed my name here to "Slick Pinkham" in honor of the imaginary player That Bobby "Slick" Leonard picked late in the 1971 ABA draft (true story!)

Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

I would instead say that an entrenched belief system is accepted by a great many people as facts that cannot be refuted no matter what, with the threat of eternal damnation to those who dare to use their brain. I don't see a justification for such dogmatic close-mindedness. I find it appalling to see such dogmatic close-mindedness spoon-fed to our children. If you want to home-school your kids and teach them about fairies, dragons, and pixie dust being real, then go right ahead. I will feel sorry for those kids, but in the end maybe they will be able to think for themselves.

Evolution stands only on evidence, not opinion. It will be a great shame to let those who want to cover up that evidence get their way.

But creationism isn't taught in public schools. It is taught in parochial schools (.along with many other religeons/theories where my kids went to school). Evolution as the source of mankind stands as opinion that some people wish to claim as fact but that fact has not been proven, it remains a theory. I don't wish to cover up evolution as long as it is presented as a theory and not a fact.

If you get to thinkin’ you’re a person of some influence, try orderin’ somebody else’s dog around..

Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

Kansas, Kentucky, and Ohio mandate the teaching of alternatives to evolution. The governor of Texas famously bragged that they teach both creationism and evolution in Texas. Most states that mandate the teaching of evolution leave it entirely up to local school districts and teachers as to whether they comply or not. I have nieces who went to public schools in Virginia who were taught by their public school "science teachers" to not believe anything in their textbook. My wife has relatives in rural Georgia taught the same way. The norm throughout the South at least is to have a textbook saying one thing and a teacher who says something else.

When I grew up in Indiana (born in the 1960s) I took all of the science classes available to me and apparently not one science or biology teacher (before I was in college) had been briefed on the writings of Darwin (Origin of Species is from 1859). Evolution was never mentioned, not even once, in any public school class that I ever attended. I cannot recall if the textbooks had info. They probably did. The teachers just ignored it.

Is it any wonder kids in the USA are getting a less-than-3rd-world level education in the sciences?

Last edited by Slick Pinkham; 05-09-2013 at 02:42 PM.

The poster "pacertom" since this forum began (and before!). I changed my name here to "Slick Pinkham" in honor of the imaginary player That Bobby "Slick" Leonard picked late in the 1971 ABA draft (true story!)

Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

Taking a nap helped. There is a problem with life being brought here from elsewhere in the universe. Either seeded or a meteor for example. If we are the product of an alien life, then the laws governing life on earth would be those of the alien life.

In other words exactly what they are now.

The law of Biogenesis states that life only comes from prior life. So nothing has changed, life can’t arise spontaneously.

Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

Taking a nap helped. There is a problem with life being brought here from elsewhere in the universe. Either seeded or a meteor for example. If we are the product of an alien life, then the laws governing life on earth would be those of the alien life.

...and the problem with that is....

Ultimately something had to have created life, somewhere, sometime. The ID theory certainly comes into play at that point when you consider that we can't create life from nothing. My only point was that it wasn't created on earth, and we certainly aren't special in the grand scheme of things.

Evolution is concerned with how life forms arise from other life forms. Evolution is the not the same as abiogenesis. If life got started due to the intervention of some divine power, the theory of evolution would be our best explanation to date for how that life has developed ever since that hypothetical moment of creation of that creature or set of creatures. If life got started due to the intervention of aliens, the theory of evolution would be our best explanation to date for how that life has developed ever since that event. Or if life came from non-life, evolution would tell us what happened next.

Evolutionary theory has nothing to say about abiogenesis and nothing to say about the origin of matter in the universe i.e. the big bang.

Origin of Life and Evolution are lumped together in the thread title, suggesting to me that a lot of people (wrongly) think that they are related somehow. If, as I did, you take thread title to mean origin of human life/evolution, then there is a thematic connection.

Last edited by Slick Pinkham; 05-09-2013 at 04:26 PM.

The poster "pacertom" since this forum began (and before!). I changed my name here to "Slick Pinkham" in honor of the imaginary player That Bobby "Slick" Leonard picked late in the 1971 ABA draft (true story!)